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Less than half convicted in Colorado hit-and-run cases get prison time

Angela Wooster, center, an East High School senior, leaves the courtroom with her mother Tobi Wooster, left, and her grandmother Donna Mattson after she spoke on behalf of her friend Deyondrah Bridgeman during the sentencing hearing for Erin Jackson. Jackson pleaded guilty to the hit-and-run of Bridgeman near East High School on Feb. 27, 2013. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

Jackson, a former teacher, is just one of many drivers who court records show sped away from collisions that left victims seriously injured or dead and later received no prison term.

A Denver Post analysis of judicial records show that since January 2008, fewer than half of the people convicted of leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injury in Colorado — including auto-pedestrian accidents — are sentenced to prison.

Despite a judge saying she deserved a prison term, Jackson on Friday was sentenced instead to five years of probation and 350 hours of community service. As part of a plea agreement, Denver prosecutors dropped the original charge of leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injury — a Class 4 felony that allows for a sentence of two to six years in prison — and agreed to a Class 5 version of the charge and not to ask the judge for incarceration.

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That original charge has been filed 461 times in Colorado since 2008. Sixty-one percent of them — 281 charges — were later dismissed. In that same time period, Colorado prosecutors filed 80 counts of leaving the scene of an accident involving death, of which 31 were later dismissed, records show.

Defendants may have still faced other lesser, harsher or similar charges.

In Denver, charges of leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injury filed since 2008 have been dismissed 60 percent of the time, The Post's review found. In the past four years, the number of hit-and-run cases involving pedestrians has nearly quadrupled.

Jackson, a 30-year-old teacher, waited 19 hours to turn herself in to police after she struck Deyondrah "Dee" Bridgeman on Feb. 27. During that time, Bridgeman was rushed to a hospital, where doctors told her mother, Eriana McLaughlin, that her daughter would never be the same.

Bridgeman suffered a major brain injury. She started talking for the first time earlier this month.

Prosecutors say factors such as evidence, circumstances, criminal histories and remorse make each hit-and-run case unique and, in some instances, difficult to take to trial. Those factors, however, are more often used to piece together a plea agreement before the case goes to a trial.

Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Henry Cooper, who prosecuted Jackson, said all those factors were considered in the negotiations. But the one factor that weighed heaviest was the wishes of Bridgeman's family.

The family wanted a felony conviction, Cooper said, which will never be removed from Jackson's record and will prohibit her from teaching in Colorado.

"It's something she (Jackson) will have to explain for the rest of her life," Cooper said.

In 2008, and again in 2012, lawmakers passed legislation increasing the penalty for both hit-and-run cases involving death and serious bodily injury. A conviction can bring up to six years in prison.

But since 2008, fewer than half of the sentences for those two charges included a prison term, according to The Post's analysis.

Sen. Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge, who worked on both pieces of legislation that increased the penalties for each charge, said she's been hesitant to consider mandatory sentences. The increase in hit-and-run accidents, however, could be something to consider, she said.

"How do you legislate morals and ethics?" Jahn asked.

Jackson asked that she be allowed to serve her probation and community service in Massachusetts. District Judge William Robbins, however, ordered it to be served at a Colorado facility where brain-injury victims are treated.

"The entire justice system is full of compromise," Robbins said. "Sometimes people in my position have to swallow things that are distasteful. Let me tell you, Ms. Jackson, not sending you to jail is extremely distasteful. You should be locked up."